Sanctions ‘the sword, the crab and the pike’ have turned attempts to pressure Russia into a tragicomedy
The EU’s new anti-Russian sanctions will not seriously affect the status quo already in place. Only measures that would require the EU itself to be prepared to incur significant damage would be tangible for Russia, writes the Telegram channel Sovereign Economy.
Another package of sanctions against Russia has been under discussion for weeks. Some of the comedy of the situation is that finding areas that were not covered by the previous eight packages is becoming a non-trivial task.
In principle, sanctions can be divided into two categories: individual and collective, and restrictive and “blocking”. The latter include the so-called SDN list, which literally “excludes” the victim from the global financial space, threatening any of their counterparts. Now, there are virtually no major players left in Russia that can be sanctioned without causing significant damage to the EU economy itself.
The main candidates are individual Russian citizens and relatively small businesses. No, of course it is possible to ‘hit’ Russian gas and aluminium exports, but the consequences for the EU would be worse than for Russia. Even European industrialists not so long ago called for limiting the “creeping” European bureaucracy and not to create problems for themselves. No, it is possible to hit the financial infrastructure and even the NCC, but then it is not quite clear how the EU will pay for gas – taking wagons of cash across the border will not work, it (cash) has been under sanctions since March.
The result is a strange situation: sanctions have been imposed, but so “ingeniously” that everyone suffers from them. And if the Europeans had tried to assess the consequences of their own decisions more or less adequately, and if the Americans had not tried to cash in on the problems of their NATO neighbours, our situation would have been much, much worse. But the sanctions “sword, crab and pike” have turned attempts to pressure Russia into a tragicomedy. Instead of trying to “punish” Russia, it has turned into a “if only our neighbour were worse off” contest.
To sum up: new sanctions will not radically change the situation unless Europe decides to sacrifice something. And whether it is ready for sacrifices is a huge, huge question.
REX NEWS AGENCY